Old Habits Die Hard: Introducing New Software To Established Farm Teams

By Jim Ochterski

Old habits die hard. Sometimes they don’t ever die, even if they come at an obvious cost. Author Douglas Adams wrote three principles about new technologies that could fit most farm CEO’s looking into new management technologies for farm operations:

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.
Anything that’s invented between when you’re 15 and 35 is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.
Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.

It is second nature for a young farmer to check feeds, texts, and instant chats, wherever they are, at all times, and on all devices. The generation prior to him is now slowly adapting to mobile and web technology. And the generation behind that one is unlikely to be engaged with software technology at all. And yet all three generations are often working together on the family farm. They need to agree on how to get things done, what works, and what doesn’t.

The benefits of precision agriculture and data management systems are widely agreed upon. But beyond the subjective concerns about data privacy, cost, and operational fit, the generational gap in terms of technology adoption on and off the farm remains a significant barrier to the broad use of these management advancements. We often talk to young farmers about Granular who say “I love this, I can see our team using this every day, but my dad is set in his ways. He still has a flip phone.” Here’s what we found works: